


Pour Me All Your Sorrows

by slightlyjillian



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-26
Updated: 2010-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-06 17:45:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightlyjillian/pseuds/slightlyjillian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-EW.  <i>They were lit to hold the memory while the living went their way, continuing.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Pour Me All Your Sorrows

**Author's Note:**

> influenced by lots and lots of _Flogging Molly_. Oh right! I loosely reinvented some info from Gundam G-Unit, which is a companion to Gundam Wing, sort of.

"Drink your glasses empty, boys. Tomorrow's just another day, but tonight we remember."

The whoop and holler in the seedy, dark bar broke through his somber brooding. Nichol twisted the glass around and drank from the opposite side. He tilted his head back, swallowing, but nothing drained into his lips.

"You're fooling yourself if you think you're going to get anything more out of that glass." Her voice was close and her body filled the close space between his stool and the one occupied next to him. Finnegan's was popular with the locals and the soldiers, active or retired. However this evening, every year, threatened to reach the maximum limits for safety inspectors. Not that anyone checked in on this night. Not that anyone who went to Finnegan's that evening had anything planned besides singing and drinking and maybe some other activities that helped one remember before forgetting.

His eyes slid to the side watching Sally Po while his glass dropped back to the table. "What are you drinking?" He asked.

"Daiquiri." She motioned at the bartender refilling a bowl of nuts.

Nichol pressed his forehead into his hand. Sweat and chills, which explained why his clothes stuck to his shoulders and along his sides. "Sissy."

"Nothing sissy about her."

"Who are you here for?" He asked, one of the rules you didn't break without permission and Sally's comment was close enough.

"Someone who tasted a lot like lime," Sally smiled small and sad. Her drink sat untouched. She rested her fingers along the stem and pressed her fingerprints into the glass.

No one could ask, but anyone could tell.

Nichol turned in his seat, so he could watch the crowd at the billiard table. Hands clasped shoulders. One couple held each other in an embrace, swaying easily to music no one else could hear. "Lon Sernan."

"I know that name," Sally changed directions as well, resting her elbows on the bar top where she left her drink.

"Served with me on Barge," Nichol clarified. "Someone signed up to the Preventers with his name. Didn't think anyone would notice. That anyone would check. That anyone would know any different." Nichol saluted Trowa Barton who stood a few feet inside the door surveying the faces. The younger man might have tipped his head in response. "No one infiltrates on my watch."

"That's right, Lon Sernan was your friend who went on the MO-V assignment."

Nichol took a long, lung-wrenching breath. "Yeah, went and didn't make it. Bastard stole his tags and identification from the rubble." He couldn't finish the thought, didn't know where it went and wasn't eager to follow.

"Did you?" Sally started to ask until a burly soldier in a Preventer uniform pushed between them to order another mug.

"To the ones we lost," the unknown soldier cheered them both.

"To the ones we lost," Nichol and Sally murmured back.

"What were you going to ask?" Nichol continued, after a long look into the crowd. Occasionally, a face seemed familiar, someone he might have known. Someone who might remind him of someone else. Where otherwise the awkwardness of uncertainty came across as wrong, too painful, in Finnegan's, this night, anyone could ask and no one cared as long as everyone found the answers they were looking for in the wreckage.

"Did you believe it might have been him?" Sally replied. "When you saw the enlistment, did you think..."

"He would have found me. No way he wouldn't," Nichol retorted. "We went to Lake Victoria together and bunked together the last year."

"Still," Sally tilted her head back. Her eyes might as well have seen into the past. She knew how it worked.

"Doctors," Nichol huffed. "Think you all know about psychology and psychosis and psychos..." He knew he was rattling. One drink too many, that last one. Distorted colors filled his vision like water spilled over paint.

Time moved in the haze touching every soul that kept inevitably forward.

_Tomorrow and tomorrow too soon,_ Nichol thought while rubbing at his cheeks. He'd seen Heero Yuy with the dark-headed mechanic girl who had helped Nichol with inventory a few months past. A few months? More like a year. Or two. Lady Une stopped to talk to both Sally and Nichol. Her eyes might have been extra bright when she said, "Glad to see you."

Her drink, always, was for Treize. She never had to tell. No one had to ask.

He was surprised to find Sally in place next to him. Nichol knew he'd pulled some puzzled face when she nudged his shoulder, hardly an effort as they'd been pressed together tight the entire time. Nichol blinked a few times, bewildered that he'd forgotten her. Right there next to him.

"It's dark, Sally," he said.

Her eyes were bright, but not with tears. Not at all. She pushed away from the bar, determined, "So let's go light a candle. For Lon. And one for her."

The table for candles was in the place where the music box normally sat--pulled away for the evening, no one could pick a song sad enough or appropriate for all. The flames of lit candles flickered and pulled at the oxygen. The combined heat warmed Nichol's skin as he reached out to light one of the dark candles.

"Lon," he said. Politely, Nichol stepped back and away while Sally took her turn at the table. The yellow-orange glow outlining her form like an angel.

He knew the significance of the candles. They were lit to hold the memory while the living went their way, continuing. He held the door open for Sally. After the heat of the fire, the night air could only chill the flesh. Sally shuddered in an involuntary fashion. Her arms crossed and her breath blew visible in the sky.

"So," Nichol shrugged, tucking his arms in tight to preserve what warmth he could.

"No point in going home alone," Sally's smile stretching into one cheek. "You'll do."

"Is that why you stuck close to me all evening?" Nichol scoffed. He kept his hands in his pockets.

"Something like that. Plus, I know you don't let things go awkward afterward." Her eyes closed into the bright, too bright, smile.

"I don't know who you've been talking to..." He could do an inventory of one. Dorothy was serious when she said open relationship, but he'd considered that fine for her end of the deal. What he hadn't considered stood in front of him.

"C'mon," he stomped off toward his nearby apartment. He didn't look to see if she'd follow but heard her well enough.

"You're a bad influence," Sally called.

Nichol grumbled, cheerfully, "I'm pretty sure that's what I should be saying to you."


End file.
